Small Steps, Superb Writing

Even if you’re already a wonderful writer (and you are), you want to keep getting better. Luckily, that’s exactly how humility — the willingness to keep learning from those around us — repays us. Here are two ways to spend a few minutes learning here and there during your week:

Ask questions. What are the greatest skills poets can teach novelists? Who has the most fantastic sentence structure? This novelist wins awards and almost all her work is dialogue, how does she do that? When should I usea series of short sentences? What figurative language am I using most often, can I widen my repertoire?

Write with a Titan. Find a favourite writer. Write out a sentence, a paragraph, or more, and analyze the craft involved. The New York Times article This is Your Brain on Writing explains why spending time in a gifted writer’s mind this way is a worthwhile practice.

The best get even better. We can develop more superpowers whenever we like. These are comforting thoughts.